The man accused of a Midtown shooting spree last Friday didn't appear to know anyone he attacked, Atlanta police said.
And Nkosi Thandiwe, the alleged shooter in the lunchtime rampage that killed one woman and injured two others, didn't seem like a person looking to do anyone any harm when he bought the handgun nearly three weeks earlier, said the manager of a southwest Atlanta pawn shop.
"He was a nice guy," said North Side Loan general manager Stephen Dell. "He was lucid. He waited patiently. He wasn't anxious about anything. Whoever sold it to him probably thought it was for his job."
Just as he'd done more than a year before when he was cleared for his security job, Thandiwe passed law enforcement background screenings required to buy the Glock semi-automatic pistol he took home on June 27.
But on Friday, he fatally shot and killed Brittney Watts, 26, as he randomly encountered her in the parking deck at 14th Street and Crescent Avenue, police say, then shot and injured co-workers Lauren Garcia, 23, and Tiffany Ferenczy, 24, as he sped away from the scene in Watts' car.
“At this point in our investigation, we have not established any connection between the subject and any of the victims, other than the fact they worked in the same building,” Atlanta Police spokesman Carlos Campos said.
Police continued Wednesday to investigate the shooting motive, even as Thandiwe waits in a Fulton County jail cell without bond.
He turned himself in to police Friday evening at his attorney's Peachtree Road law offices, just a few miles north of the where the incident happened.
Watts had worked at her Midtown office only a few months, and Ferenczy and Garcia were simply walking to lunch when Thandiwe allegedly began shooting, seemingly to get a parking attendant to open the entrance gate so he could leave, witnesses said.
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